Server crashing several times per day

[night_chrono]

I have Jellyfin version 10.10.7 running on Windows 11. My hardware is a 10th gen i5 10400, 64 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB NVME SSD.

At seemingly random points throughout the day when watching media, the playback stops, the app freezes (windows, and android have both had the freezing happen) and the entire server becomes inaccessible until the physical server has been rebooted. *EDIT FOR CLARITY* Jellyfin becomes inaccessible. I can still RDP into the server and reboot it. What I meant was that jellyfin is completely inaccessible, even on the machine going to "localhost" in the browser. My apologies for the confusing wording.

I have checked the log file and nothing jumps out at me. I had errors previously about episode ordering names (which I have since corrected), stale accounts (I was experimenting with authentik integration) but I have since deleted those accounts and removed all unused plugins. The only plugin I have now is TheTVDB.

I have 2 Gbps up that is nowhere close to being saturated, but the crashes have happened over LAN as well.

Playback is almost exclusively direct playback and transcoding shouldn't be an issue. Even if there was transcoding, the 10400 with quick sync should handle it no problem.

I have poured over the default log and found no evidence of anything suspect. While I was typing this post, with two direct playbacks resuming after a fresh reboot, CPU usage spiked, and the UI on the desktop app on a different windows PC, and in a web browser on localhost became extremely laggy. Again, nothing in the log I can see, but I am no expert. I have just enabled debugg logging so hopefully that offers more insights. I can provide that log whenever the crash happens again. I am sure it will be within 24 hours.

Does anyone have any suggestions or insight to share as to why this keeps happening?

Thanks to all who assist.

[toytown]

If the entire server becomes inaccessible, then this will most likely be a hardware problem rather than software. Jellyfin crashing will not bring down the server. I would personally look at running MemTest (https://www.memtest.org/) from either a bootable USB/CD/DVD for at least 1 day to see if any memory issues occur as the first thing. If this passes then post back and hopefully we can start testing cpu/gpu/psu etc.

[night_chrono]

Sorry, I was tired posting last night. Jellyfin becomes inaccessible, I can still RDP in and reboot. That wasn't very clear, my apologies.

[night_chrono]

Sorry for double post, off my ADHD meds temporarily and getting all my thoughts down is challenging. I updated the OP with more information. What I was trying to say is that Jellyfin becomes completely inaccessible. Even on the server, going to "localhost" in the browser.

[toytown]

Go to the admin dashboard, click the logs menu and get the logs from the latest day (i.e. log_20250703.log) .  Upload them and let's see if they contain anything useful

[night_chrono]

Here are the logs

[theguymadmax]

Your logs show two main errors. Disable those two plugins: Jellyfin.Plugin.Vgmdb and the open subtitle plugin. 

Code:

[2025-07-02 06:56:46.030 -04:00] [ERR] [40] MediaBrowser.Providers.Music.AlbumMetadataService: Error in "VGMdb"
System.Text.Json.JsonException: '<' is an invalid start of a value. Path: $ | LineNumber: 0 | BytePositionInLine: 0.
---> System.Text.Json.JsonReaderException: '<' is an invalid start of a value. LineNumber: 0 | BytePositionInLine: 0.
  at System.Text.Json.ThrowHelper.ThrowJsonReaderException(Utf8JsonReader& json, ExceptionResource resource, Byte nextByte, ReadOnlySpan`1 bytes)
  at System.Text.Json.Utf8JsonReader.ConsumeValue(Byte marker)
  at System.Text.Json.Utf8JsonReader.ReadFirstToken(Byte first)
  at System.Text.Json.Utf8JsonReader.ReadSingleSegment()
  at System.Text.Json.Serialization.JsonConverter`1.ReadCore(Utf8JsonReader& reader, JsonSerializerOptions options, ReadStack& state)
  --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
  at System.Text.Json.ThrowHelper.ReThrowWithPath(ReadStack& state, JsonReaderException ex)
  at System.Text.Json.Serialization.JsonConverter`1.ReadCore(Utf8JsonReader& reader, JsonSerializerOptions options, ReadStack& state)
  at System.Text.Json.Serialization.Metadata.JsonTypeInfo`1.DeserializeAsync(Stream utf8Json, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
  at System.Net.Http.Json.HttpContentJsonExtensions.ReadFromJsonAsyncCore[T](HttpContent content, JsonSerializerOptions options, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
  at Jellyfin.Plugin.Vgmdb.VgmdbApi.GetSearchResultsAsync(String name, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
  at Jellyfin.Plugin.Vgmdb.Providers.Info.VgmdbAlbumProvider.GetSearchResults(AlbumInfo searchInfo, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
  at Jellyfin.Plugin.Vgmdb.Providers.Info.VgmdbAlbumProvider.GetIdAsync(AlbumInfo info, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
  at Jellyfin.Plugin.Vgmdb.Providers.Info.VgmdbAlbumProvider.GetMetadata(AlbumInfo info, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
  at MediaBrowser.Providers.Manager.MetadataService`2.ExecuteRemoteProviders(MetadataResult`1 temp, String logName, Boolean replaceData, TIdType id, IEnumerable`1 providers, CancellationToken cancellationToken)

Code:

[2025-07-02 18:56:37.730 -04:00] [ERR] [53] MediaBrowser.Providers.Subtitles.SubtitleManager: Error downloading subtitles from "Open Subtitles"
System.Security.Authentication.AuthenticationException: Account username and/or password are not set up
  at Jellyfin.Plugin.OpenSubtitles.OpenSubtitleDownloader.Login(CancellationToken cancellationToken)
  at Jellyfin.Plugin.OpenSubtitles.OpenSubtitleDownloader.Search(SubtitleSearchRequest request, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
  at MediaBrowser.Providers.Subtitles.SubtitleManager.SearchSubtitles(SubtitleSearchRequest request, CancellationToken cancellationToken) t

[night_chrono]

I already disabled them. Before I opened this thread, I thought to simplify and disable as much as I could. I will see how this holds up.

[night_chrono]

The issue occurred again, even after disabling the plugins. Here is a fresh set of logs

[night_chrono]

I may have found the issue. I had my transcoding set to VA-API instead of QSV and I am running on windows. Followed this guide to correct my settings:

https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/post-i...tion/intel

We will see how this works now.